Why can't capitalism stop its excesses, greed, and other damaging characteristics?

Well then, lets take a look at your exemplary ideal economy under Russian communism:

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/commandingheights/lo/countries/ru/ru_economic.html

1917: The Russian economy is devastated by the chaos of a world war, two domestic revolutions, and a breakdown in food supplies brought on by a terrible winter. The economy's militarization assists the takeover by the Bolshevik dictatorship and the institution of "war communism." Private land and the free market are abolished, and a state monopoly on prices and the food trade imposed.

1918-1920: Russia's postwar industrial output is less than 20 percent of the prewar level, with whole sectors of the economy destroyed. Lenin aims to rebuild the shattered economy. As core industries are nationalized, debates rage about the optimum extent of state planning. Russia's colossal debt, owed to international creditors, is wiped out when the regime refuses to recognize the debts of the tsar.

1921-1928: The future core of the Soviet command economy, Gosplan (General Commission on State Planning), is established in 1921. Faced with economic crisis, Lenin introduces a tactical compromise with capitalism to incentivize production and trade. His 1921 National Economic Plan, which allows private agriculture and limited small trade, results in an immediate and dramatic improvement.

1929-1932: Stalin imposes the command economy. The First Five-Year Plan sets extravagant targets for heavy industry's expansion. Every enterprise and worker must meet dictated norms, to be fulfilled without discussion. As the Depression hits the rest of the world, the Soviet economy powers ahead. But as Soviet agriculture is forcibly collectivized, at significant human cost, production drops by 30 percent.

1933-1940: The Second Five-Year plan calls for still higher industrial growth. Steel, coal, power, chemicals, and the military are given absolute priority. Quantity reigns over quality, and falsified statistics are common. Victims of Stalin's mass arrests, forced to work as prisoner employees in prison camps, form a core of the Soviet economy. By 1939 the gulag is the largest employer in Europe.

1941-1945: The command economy forges ahead during WWII, with labor mobilized on an epic scale and productivity increased with forced overtime. Military output reaches staggering proportions, propped up by Allied aid under the lend-lease scheme. Rapid industrialization has turned the USSR into a power capable of defeating Hitler, but military strength gives a false impression of the nation, weakened by shortages.

1946-1953: The Fourth Five-Year Plan aims to restore and surpass prewar levels of production. The command economy goes into overdrive to achieve output miracles no matter what the cost and makes a rapid recovery. As the Cold War begins, resources are prioritized to heavy industry, nuclear weapons, and the space race. Agriculture and light industries lag, and food and essentials remain in short supply.

1954-1962: The command economy tries to increase output by adding input. Khrushchev aims to boost agriculture by cultivating an extra 35 million hectares of virgin lands. After short-term gains, food shortages return, and the USSR must import wheat. Attempting to reform central planning, Khrushchev replaces the central ministries with local councils better placed for practical economic decision-making.

1963-1965: Brezhnev continues to pour resources into the military industrial complex. Unbeknownst to the Soviet or world public, the military consumes more than 30 percent of Soviet GNP. Khrushchev's local councils are abolished, centralized industrial ministries restored. Prime Minister Aleksei Kosygin's economic reforms give enterprises slightly more freedom of practice, but not enough to alter the system.

1966-1972: The Eighth Five-Year Plan places greater emphasis on consumer goods. The USSR grows more dependent on the West for these and new technology, and establishes new partnerships with Western firms. In 1966 a Fiat-licensed Lada factory slowly starts to meet the public's growing desire for private cars, but there remains a stark absence of supporting services, including modern roads.

1973-1976: By the time of the '73 oil crisis, the USSR is the world's largest producer of oil and natural gas and the third largest of coal. Inefficient Soviet factories consume vast amounts of energy, but amid this plenty, the public continues to suffer chronic energy shortages. The oil windfall keeps the economy running, but by the mid-1970s the industrial economy ceases to grow and begins its slow decline.

1977-1985: Despite huge investment, the collectivized farm system still fails to deliver; 28 percent of gross agricultural output comes from the 1 percent of land cultivated on personal plots. A law enshrines the need for private plots and encourages enterprises and army units to develop auxiliary farming for their own purposes. Arms spending increases in answer to President Reagan's aggressive foreign policy.

That doesn't sound like something to aspire to.

Continual shortages of basic necessities, complete disregard for and abuse of workers, and the only bright spots are where private enterprise (aka capitalism), is allowed.

You sure you don't want to come up with a different example?

 

The USSR between 1917 and 1985 experienced greater economic growth than the US has ever seen. The rest of your post consists of personal opinions.

 

Get a clue. The troubles you mention in the USSR are the reasons for the revolution and the seizing of state power. These lines existed in the beginning until the government could address them. But they serve the right well as opportunities to spin and spit on socialism which was never actually established in the USSR or anywhere else yet.

Venezuela? Obviously you know nothing about the long, intense campaign against every aspect of Venezuela by the US over the decades. Wanna talk about Venezuela? In reality, Venezuelans have seen their living conditions vastly improved by socialism. Their economic problems are not due to some inherent fault in socialism, but to artificially low oil prices and sabotage by forces hostile to socialism.

About a year ago the IMF said Venezuela’s growth rate was negative at -8%, the inflation rate was 482%, and the unemployment rate was 17% and climbing.

Mark Weisbrot of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, who had just returned from a trip to Venezuela, says those INF numbers are projections that turned out to be very wrong. Actual inflation was extremely high but the 482% projected was way off. It was actually 182%. The point being that the IMF numbers are not even close and so not reliable. Last year the IMF projected the economy for last year would shrink by 10% but it shrank by 5.7%. And the U.S. media further exaggerates the numbers because it’s “socialism”. They even were viciously critical of the economy when it was booming from 2003 to 2008.

Weisbrot said the U.S. has been working to topple the Venezuelan government for many years and as an example in March of 2016 Obama announced sanctions againt Venezuela, saying that they presented “an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security of the U.S.” The corporate U.S. media didn’t bother to ask how that could be so Obama never had to explain that bit of contrived thinking. But it succeeded in persuading banks to refuse to extend further loans to Venezuela.



Weisbrot cites increased Trump sanctions that threaten to destroy Venezuela’s oil industry and the economy with it. Even the Venezuelan opposition is against the sanctions. So the threat to their economy is coming from the U.S., not Venezuela or “socialism”.



Opposition in Venezuela has always been supported by US A.I.D. and The National Endowment for Democracy with milions and millions of taxpayer dollars.
Obama allocated $5.5 million to fund opposition.



American lawyer, Eva Golinger, spent 3 years studying our role in the development of the Venezuelan crisis. She used the FOIA to access government data. The documents she obtained showed that the U.S. government knew all about the 2002 coup that was to occur against Chavez two days before it happened. The documents showed that the CIA identified Chavez and 10 others to be arrested. A document said “to provoke military action, the plotters may try to exploit unrest stemming from opposition demonstrations slated for later this month”.

Two hours before protesters were shot by rooftop snipers, an army officer representing military forces that overthrew Chavez recorded a statement for release in which he said that Chavez had snipers kill 6 people. Chavez was captured and a corporate giant, Pedro Carmona was installed as President. Dispite knowing what would happen beforehand and even making recommendations on whom to arrest including Chavez, Ari Fleischer said in a quick press conference “we know that the action encouraged by the Chavez government provoked this crisis. The results of these events are now that President Chavez has resigned the presidency.” The public announcement of this false information was part of the U.S. government’s role in the coup. Tens of thousands of Venezuelans took to the streets to demand Chavez’s safe return and soldiers still loyal to Chavez retook the palace and the coup crumbled within 48 hours.

Eva’s investigation uncovered a money trail from Washington to key organizations and individuals involved in the coup. She found that in the months before the coup, Washington had given millions of dollars to Chavezes opponents.

The U.S. claims they want “democracy” in Venezuela, but while Chavez was in jail, Carmona was busy dissolving the parliament and the courts leaving him free to rule by decree. Just 5 months before, Carmona had visited Washington as a guest of the State Department. A cable from the U.S. Embassy in Caracas referred to Carmona and his collegues as “influential business leaders who have consistently played a critical role in advancing U.S. commercial interests in Venezuela.” Another one said Carmona was “the right man at the right time” for Venezuela.

After Chavez was returned to power, the State Department sent instructions to the U.S. Embassy in Venezuela, saying “if asked ‘was the United States involved in the attempt to remove Chavez from power?” the answer was to be “absolutely not”.

Golinger’s research also uncovered documentation showing that Washington also backed disgruntled elements within the Venezuelan Armed Forces.

Also see http://links.org.au/for-a-democratic-revolutionary-socialist-solution-to-Venezuela-crisis

So Venezuela's troubles are hardly their own doings or evidence of the "failure of socialism".

 

Socialism has. The US has never experienced the rate of economic growth that the USSR had from 1917 to 1985. And communist economy under a communist system has never existed so we can't even talk about it.

 

I just got done destroying your narrative about how awesome the USSR was from 1917 to 1985, feel free to dispute any of it.

 

China and the USSR are/were state capitalism:
First half: private property and regulation.
Second half: what was the USSR (state capitalism)




Let's see you refute that.

 

So your idea is that socialism and communism have never been tried so we should do it.


Make everyone poor so that we don't have income inequality.

 

I never said Russian communism was "exemplary" or even desirable. I said the USSR had unsurpassed economic growth rates between 1917 and 1985. And just for the record, I do not recommend, prefer, like, advocate, or defend the USSR as something to emulate or attempt. It was a disaster.

 

You try too hard to oppose, and consequently in your great haste you misrepresent what I say. I didn't say it has never been tried, and I never advocated anything that would make anyone poor. But you don't want to know what I do see as an alternative so you don't ask, you don't discuss it, and you just keep on opposing and attacking everything with misrepresentations.

 

You were the one that said you didn't want to debate.

I notice you didn't address my views on what has become of capitalism here in the US.

 

You misrepresent me. I made one statement about it that you haven't refuted, and that is that the economy in the USSR from 1917 to 1985 exceeded any growth rate you've seen in the USA. I also said I do not recommend, prefer, like, advocate, or defend the USSR as something to emulate or attempt. It was a disaster in just about every other important way.

 

Another distortion. QUOTE me.

I don't see any such relevant views. i only saw misrepresentations and deflections.

 

There you go

Yes I realize you aren't looking for debate. Just confirmation.

 

It only was possible thanks to slave labor, complete lack of necessities such as food, poor quality of produced goods, abusing workers.....and still didn't work until capitalism was introduced into their methods.

 

Yeah, but they did it by slave labor, poor quality, fake statistics, and still only saw gains when they used capitalist methods.

 

So it's pointless talking to you than?

 

I'm done with such spins and false arguments for today.

 

Propaganda. When the communists took over Russia feudalism was the economy. The vast majority were peasants and owned so little of anything as to be in greater poverty than you've ever seen. Were there problems then and later for the government to face? Sure. But by 1985 the USSR was a superpower strong enough to worry the USA and the people were better off by far. That alone refutes any claim that the USSR only produced suffering or poverty.

 

They used capitalist methods from the start as state capitalism..... -what you like to call "socialism".

 

It's pointless to only offer propaganda and distortions. I offered to enter into a civil and honest discussion with you about socialism and some errors you made but you will have nothing to do with such facts. Your choice.

 

And continually failed to produce enough food or energy under communism, as indicated by the report I linked.

 

Only militarily, and only by literally taking food out of people's mouths.

 

They were so well off that they had to build a wall to keep people in, used the KGB to torture and kill dissenters, and eventually tore it all down to start over with a capitalist economy and representative govt.

 

Your own words are false arguments? We are in total agreement.

 

Greed is the engine that runs a healthy economy. Without greed we never would have gotten this far. People work to make money not friends and business create jobs.
Problem comes when laws are ignored and broken. Then greed leads to tyranny and poverty. Like is happening now with both parties. imo. Left scream greed yet most of the richest in leadership are democrats. Tax the working man to death to give to the lazy and immoral that keeps them in power and make crooked deals with big biz all over the world.